Roundup: Historians' Take

Juan Cole: Obama as Nobelist, Obama as game-changer

I was listening to National Public Radio on the award of the Nobel Peace Prize to President Barack Obama, and they brought on some nonentity from one of Rupert Murdoch's faux "magazines," who delivered himself of the remark that when he heard the news, he broke out laughing. He laughed at Obama. He is being paid by the Aussie media monopolist, the billionaire bully, to laugh at Obama. The Right in the US objected to Obama getting the peace prize on the alleged grounds that

Daniel Pipes: That Nobel Peace Prize: Bashes Bush, Handcuffs Obama

[Daniel Pipes is director of the Middle East Forum and Taube distinguished visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University.] "He won what?" is the universal first reaction. And second, at least on the Right: "Why did they do that?" Even the Nobel committee's citation does not pretend Barack Obama has actually achieved anything. Rather, it was given to him "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international di

Bethany Moreton: To Serve God and Walmart [Video, 7 minutes 57 seconds]

Bethany Moreton, author of To Serve God and Walmart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise on how Walmart has effectively married capitalism and Christianity.

Henry Louis Gates Jr.: Michelle's Great-Great-Great-Granddaddy—and Yours

[Henry Louis Gates Jr. is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and the director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is the founder and the editor-in-chief of The Root.] First Lady Michelle Obama’s maternal third-great-grandfather was a white man who fathered Melvinia Shields’ (her maternal third great-grandmother) son, Dolphus T. Shields, both slaves. This discovery, like all recoveries of the identities of ancest

Tom Engelhardt: War of the Worlds

[Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008), an alternative history of the mad Bush years.] An unremarkable paragraph in a piece in my hometown paper recently caught my eye. It was headlined

Juan Cole: Does Iran really want the bomb?

[Salon contributor Juan Cole is a professor of modern Middle Eastern and South Asian history at the University of Michigan and the author of "Engaging the Muslim World."] When you tool around the blogosphere and the news sites, the discourse about Iran's nuclear program is maddeningly contradictory. But I think a single hypothesis can account for all the known facts. These are: 1. Iran is making a drive to close the fuel cycle and to be capable of independe

Victor Davis Hanson: The War in Afghanistan

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College.]Two-Front Wars — Theirs and Ours Something is not quite right about the convent

Ron Radosh: McChrystal vs. Obama: Is This Another MacArthur vs. Truman?

[Ronald Radosh is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at The Hudson Institute, and a Prof. Emeritus of History at the City University of New York.] Writing in The Washington Post, Yale Law School Professor Bruce Ackerman attempts to chastise General Stanley McChrystal for standing behind his well known recommendations on the military strategy for the United States to follow in Afghanistan. What upsets the professor is McChrystal’s audacity to challenge the wisdom of the expert from Delaware,

Juan Cole: Iran and Nuclear Latency

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] When you tool around the blogosphere and the news sites, the discourse about Iran's nuclear program is maddeningly contradictory. But I think a single hypothesis can account for all the known facts. These are: 1. Iran is making a drive to close the fuel cycle and to be capable of independent

Jonathan Zimmerman: U.S. needs foreign teachers

[Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history at New York University and lives in Narberth] 'Shut up, Jackie Chan!" That's what students shouted at Danilo Danga when he first arrived in Baltimore, where he teaches at a public middle school. But Danga isn't from China, as his students' ignorant taunt implied. He's from the Philippines. So are 600 other Baltimore teachers, who now constitute 10 percent of the city's instructional force. Other districts are hiring teachers fr

Victor David Hanson: The Obsolescence of a Slur

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.] The ch

Susan Dunn: All the President's Meddling

[Susan Dunn, the author of the forthcoming “Roosevelt’s Gamble: How F.D.R. Fought to Change the Democratic Party,” is a professor at Williams College.] Williamstown, Mass. “PRESIDENT OBAMA is not only president of the country, but head of the Democratic Party,” said Doug Sosnik, the political director in the Clinton White House, commenting on President Obama’s aggressive move to quash the election hopes of New York’s deeply unpopular governor, David Paterson, and to pic

David Kaiser: Afghanistan - An historical perspective

[For the past thirty years I have been a historian of international and domestic politics, as well as an authority on some of the more famous criminal cases in American history.] Although I grew up amidst government decision-makers at various fairly high levels, I evidently decided at some unconscious level that their life was not for me. Like some of the characters in Solzhenitsyn’s First Circle, I prized time to think more than influence, and of that I have had plenty. Yet as you

Victor Davis Hanson: Bitter Harvests to Come

[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College.] Reflections on the Speech to Congress If one were to sum up the Obama speech to the joint

Walid Phares: World Must Sustain Push Against Iran's Human Rights Abuses

[Dr. Walid Phares is the author of the “War of Ideas: Jihadism against Democracy” and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.] As the United States and the international community meet Iran’s diplomats and hope for the nuclear crisis to be resolved, another critical front should be opened: an investigation into the Iranian regime for abuse of human rights of its own people. I don’t understand how democracies stood by idly since last June as the Ba

Jim Sleeper: US neo-cons jump the conservative ship

[Jim Sleeper is a writer and teacher on American civic culture and politics and a lecturer in political science at Yale. ] The high-end blogosphere has been aflutter over "Conservatism is Dead," the latest of Sam Tanenhaus' many long elegies in The New Republic for conservatism as a movement and an ideology. But no one has recalled, much less revisi

Stanley Kutler: Obama's Afghanistan Dilemma

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly called for expanding the war in Afghanistan. Be careful what you wish for. The bells of Afghanistan echo the Vietnam War. Like then, we have a powerful military establishment linked to civilian foreign and defense intellectuals clamoring for an expansive military adventure to protect us from an onrushing enemy. The pressure on President

Stanley I. Kutler: Obama’s Afghanistan Dilemma

[Stanley Kutler is the author of “The Wars of Watergate” and other writings.] During his presidential campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly called for expanding the war in Afghanistan. Be careful what you wish for. The bells of Afghanistan echo the Vietnam War. Like then, we have a powerful military establishment linked to civilian foreign and defense intellectuals clamoring for an expansive military adventure to protect us from an onrushing enemy. The pressure on President

Juan Cole: Top Things you Think You Know about Iran that are not True

[Mr. Cole is Professor of Modern Middle Eastern and South Asian History at the University of Michigan. His website is http://www.juancole.com.] Thursday is a fateful day for the world, as the US, other members of the United Nations Security Council, and Germany meet in Geneva with Iran in a bid to resolve outstanding issues. Although Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had earlier attempted to put the nuclear issue off the bargaining table, th

Tristram Hunt: The Supreme Court is a perfectly English idea

[Tristram Hunt is a British historian, broadcaster and newspaper columnist.] A walk along the law lords corridor in the Palace of Westminster this summer was a sorry affair, with the bustle gone, the offices gutted and the empty rooms eyed up by envious peers. But to step across Parliament Square and enter the new Supreme Court, set amid the sand-blasted stone of the former Middlesex Guildhall, was to sense the anticipation of power. Here all was new and sleek with thick coatings of